She scammed hotels, banks, and friends out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. She was convicted on one count of attempted grand larceny, three counts of grand larceny, and four counts of theft services. She served almost four years in jail, including time at Rikers Island. Six weeks after her release, she was arrested by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement for overstaying her visa. And recently, Anna Delvey appeared on Dancing With the Stars—wearing a bedazzled ankle monitor.
Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, gained a reputation as one of New York’s most infamous con artists by posing as a wealthy German heiress. “Anna Delvey” was yet another lie that Sorokin created, part of an elaborate ruse that granted her access to the inner circles of the city’s social elite. Although Sorokin was born to middle–class parents in the Soviet Union, she gave conflicting accounts of her background that sometimes identified her father as a wealthy diplomat, oil executive, or financier. In reality, Sorokin’s father was a truck driver and HVAC business owner.
The persona that Sorokin formed for herself was characterized by glamor, excess, and exclusivity. Sorokin lied about having a $60 million trust fund, using fake financial documents to support the lavish lifestyle she led in New York. She stayed at luxury hotels, chartered a $35,000 private jet, dined at New York’s most upscale spots, and claimed to party with celebrities like Macaulay Culkin and Derek Blasberg. The smoke and mirrors Sorokin shrouded herself in allowed her to borrow and never repay large sums of money from her wealthy friends, mounting unpaid bills as she climbed further into the lifestyle of a socialite.
After Sorokin was arrested in 2017 by the Los Angeles Police Department, her case granted her a level of fame even beyond the one that she had previously cultivated for herself. The public was captivated by the opulence and ridiculous nature of her fabricated life, causing Sorokin to become a media sensation. Tabloids continuously ran articles on her, podcasts like Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy hosted her, and Netflix released the show Inventing Anna inspired by her.
Amid the media frenzy, it became easy to forget the implications of what Sorokin had done. The fact that she was a convicted fraudster who was found guilty of eight theft–related charges became a lighthearted detail, diluted by the TikTok edits, custom T–shirts, and YouTube videos that people made about her. Most recently, social media has been populated with videos of Sorokin’s appearance on Dancing With the Stars, where she was one of the first celebrities to be voted out of the show.
The media’s coverage of Sorokin’s reaction to her elimination is further proof of the level of celebrity status that she’s achieved. After being asked what she would take from her experience on DWTS, Sorokin responded with simply: “Nothing.” This one–word response incited a new burst of tabloid and news coverage, additionally leading Sorokin to be hailed as “iconic” on social media by people like DWTS co–host Julianne Hough.
The treatment and glamorization of Sorokin demonstrates the powers that media has to shift narratives, causing a desensitization to the true weight of events. This alarming notion has manifested itself in the online reception of other controversial figures. Gypsy–Rose Blanchard, for example, rose to worldwide fame when her story of alleged abuse and eventual involvement in her mother’s murder came to light. Blanchard’s mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, had subjected her to lifelong physical, medical, and mental abuse. After developing an online relationship with Nicholas Godejohn, whom Blanchard met on a Christian singles website, Blanchard and Godejohn conspired to kill her mother in an effort to escape her control. In July 2016, Blanchard was sentenced to ten years in prison for the murder of her mother.
Upon her early release in December 2023, Blanchard was greeted with an onslaught of media fanfare and attention. Blanchard’s presence in the influencer space only added to the commotion. Almost immediately, she began posting on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, sharing videos about post–prison life that went viral. Clips from Blanchard—where she talked about her boyfriend, participated in TikTok trends, or showed off her makeup routine—were reposted and edited by a plethora of digital audiences. Social media users made memes centered around Blanchard’s entry into internet culture following her release, with some even creating T–shirts mocking her.
The propelling of figures like Gypsy–Rose Blanchard and Anna Delvey into pop culture prominence effectively allowed the weight of their stories to fade. This idea has been increasingly demonstrated online. Cameron Herrin—convicted of killing a mother and daughter while street racing—has been the subject of a myriad of TikTok edits, with fans making Instagram pages (captioned #justiceforcameronherrin) where they claimed he was too handsome to be incarcerated. The Menendez brothers—victims of intense abuse at the hands of their father, who they eventually killed—inspired the Netflix show Monsters. This past Halloween, costumes of the brothers circulated online.
A concerning pattern has emerged as the oversaturation of social media content causes an emotional detachment from the true gravity of real–life events. Rather than recognizing the moral complexity of these figures’ actions, social media transforms them into pop culture celebrities, allowing their stories to become fodder for trends, merchandise, and virality. This online phenomenon demonstrates a troubling side of the internet: its power to trivialize, commodify, and sensationalize real–life experiences of trauma and harm.
